Pandemonium, New York, Wednesday Evening
This was how it was supposed to be. Isabelle was in New York, at Club Pandemonium, in a nice white dress that covered up her Marks. The ruby rested against her chest, her whip was wrapped around her arm like a bracelet, and although the club was all darkness and artificial smoke, she knew Alec and Jace were no far at all. They were all hunting. And they'd already spotted their prey.
And their prey was taking the bait. It looked like a boy with blue hair, and it -- he had just snapped to attention, spotting Isabelle across the crowd. Isabelle smirked to herself, then turned that smirk wider and flirtier as she gave it to the guy, moving through the crowd. He followed her, not seeming to notice the two dark figures at his heels, stalking behind him. Isabelle made her way to the wall, and opened a door marked no admittance. She beckoned the blue-haired boy after her. He complied, and they slipped through the door.
"What's your name?"
Isabelle turned and smiled. What faint light there was in the storage room spilled down through high barred windows smeared with dirt. Piles of electrical cables, along with broken bits of mirrored disco balls and discarded paint cans littered the floor. "Isabelle."
"That's a nice name." He walked toward her, stepping carefully among the wires in case any of them were live. He was leering at her like she was dinner. "I haven't seen you here before."
"You're asking me if I come here often?" Isabelle asked with a giggle, covering her mouth with her hand. If that exposed a Mark on her wrist, oh well.
It had. The demon froze. "You --" He didn't finish. She moved with lightning swiftness, striking out at him with her open hand, a blow to his chest that would have sent him down gasping if he'd been a human being. He staggered back, and Isabelle brought her whip down, curling around his ankles, jerking him off his feet. He hit the ground, writhing, the metal biting deep into his skin. She laughed, standing over him, and yanked hard on the whip, securing it. Her smile, she was sure, was terrifying in its glee. Couldn't help it; she hadn't felt this much like herself in a long time now. "He's all yours, boys."
A low laugh sounded behind the demon, and now there were hands on him, hauling him upright, throwing him against one of the concrete pillars. Alec and Jace pulled his hands behind his back, and bound his wrists with wire. While he was struggling, Jace walked around the pillar into his view. "So," he said. "Are there any more with you?"
"Any other what?" the demon asked, making Isabelle roll her eyes at the pointlessness of playing dumb. "Come on now," Jace said, voicing her thoughts. He held up his hands, and his dark sleeves slipped down, showing the runes all over his wrists, the backs of his hands, his palms. "You know what I am."
"Shadowhunter," he hissed.
Jace grinned. "Got you," he said. He stuck his hands in his pockets, and paced back and forth, leisurely. "So," he said. "You should tell me if there are any other of your kind with you."
"I don't know what you're talking about." The blue-haired boy's tone was pained but surly. "He means other demons," said Alec, dryly. "You do know what a demon is, don't you?"
The boy turned his face away, although his mouth was working, even if no sound came out. "Demons," drawled the Jace, tracing the word on the air with his finger. "Religiously defined as hell's denizens, the servants of Satan, but understood here, for the purposes of the Clave, to be any malevolent spirit whose origin is outside our own home dimension --"
"That's enough, Jace," Isabelle sighed.
"Isabelle's right," Alec agreed. "Nobody here needs a lesson in semantics -- or demonology." Jace raised his head and smiled at the demon. "Isabelle and Alec think I talk too much," he said, confidingly. "Do you think I talk too much?"
The blue-haired boy didn't reply. His mouth was still working. "I could give you information," he said. "I know where Valentine is." Jace glanced back at Alec, who shrugged. "Valentine's in the ground," Jace said. "The thing's just toying with us." Isabelle tossed her hair. "Kill it, Jace," she said. "It's not going to tell us anything."
Jace raised his hand, and dim light sparked off the knife he was holding. It was oddly translucent, the blade clear as crystal, sharp as a shard of glass, the hilt set with red stones. The demon boy gasped. "Valentine is back!" he protested, dragging at the bonds that held his hands behind his back. "All the Infernal Worlds know it -- I know it -- I can tell you where he is --"
Rage flared suddenly in Jace's eyes. "By the Angel, every time we capture one of you bastards, you claim you know where Valentine is. Well, we know where he is too. He's in hell. And you -- " Jace turned the knife in his grasp, the edge sparking like a line of fire. "You can join him there."
And he would've made good on his words, Isabelle knew it, except right then someone stumbled out from behind a pillar. A girl. A mundane girl with red hair, screaming, "Stop! You can't do this." Jace whirled around, so startled that the knife flew from his hand and clattered against the concrete floor. Isabelle and Alec turned along with him. Their expressions of astonishment had to be damn near identical. They were all glamoured to be invisible to mundanes, after all. It was Alec who spoke first. "What's this?" he demanded, looking from the girl to his siblings, as if they might know what she was doing there. "It's a girl," Jace said, recovering his composure. "Surely you've seen girls before, Alec. Your sister Isabelle is one." He took a step closer to the girl, squinting as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. "A mundie girl," he said, half to himself. "And she can see us."
"Of course I can see you," the girl said. "I'm not blind, you know."
"Oh, but you are," said Jace, bending to pick up his knife. "You just don't know it." He straightened up. "You'd better get out of here, if you know what's good for you."
"I'm not going anywhere," the girl said. "If I do, you'll kill him." She pointed at the boy with the blue hair. "That's true," admitted Jace, twirling the knife between his fingers. "What do you care if I kill him or not?"
"Be-- because," the girl spluttered. "You can't just go around killing people."
"You're right," said Jace. "You can't go around killing people." He pointed at the demon, whose eyes were slitted. "That's not a person, little girl. It may look like a person and talk like a person and maybe even bleed like a person. But it's a monster."
"Jace," said Isabelle warningly. "That's enough."
"You're crazy," Clary said, backing away from him. "I've called the police, you know. They'll be here any second."
"She's lying," said Alec, but there was doubt on his face. "Jace, do you --" He never got to finish his sentence. At that moment the blue-haired boy, with a high, yowling cry, tore free of the restraints binding him to the pillar, and flung himself on Jace. They fell to the ground and rolled together, the blue-haired boy tearing at Jace with hands that glittered as if tipped with metal. Isabelle yelled out his name as she and Alec ran towards them, the mundie girl all but forgotten. Sitting on Jace's chest, the demon slashed at Jace with claws extended. Jace threw an arm up to protect himself, and the claws raked it, splattering blood. The demon lunged again -- but this time Isabelle's whip came down across his back. He shrieked and fell to the side. Jace rolled over, a blade already gleaming in hand. He sank the knife into the demon's chest. It arched off the floor, gurgling and twisting as blackish liquid exploded around the hilt of the knife. With a grimace Jace stood up, then reached down, and yanked out the knife. The demon's eyes opened again, and fixed on Jace. Between his teeth, he hissed, "So be it. The Forsaken will take you all." Jace seemed to snarl. The demon's eyes rolled back. His body began to jerk and twitch as he crumpled, folding in on himself, growing smaller and smaller until he vanished entirely.
Alec was already moving in to get an iratze on Jace, while the sound of scrambling caught Isabelle's attention. The mundie girl. She was trying to back away and get out. She was tripping over wires, though, and that gave Isabelle ample time to block her route off, whip in hand. And, yeah, maybe she was a little pissed off, because she flicked the whip towards the girl, and made the end wrap itself around her wrist before she jerked it tight. The girl gasped with pain and surprise, and Isabelle felt no compassion. "Stupid little mundie," she hissed. "You could have gotten Jace killed."
"He's crazy," the girl said, trying to pull her wrist back. The whip bit deeper into her skin. "You're all crazy. What do you think you are, vigilante killers? The police --"
"The police aren't usually interested unless you can produce a body," said Jace. Cradling his arm, he picked his way across the cable-strewn floor toward the girls. Alec followed behind him, face screwed into a scowl. The girl glanced towards where the demon boy had been. There was no trace of it now. "They return to their home dimensions when they die," said Jace. "In case you were wondering."
"Jace," Alec hissed. "Be careful."
Jace drew his arm away. A freckling of blood marked his face. "She can see us, Alec," he said. "She already knows too much."
"So what do you want me to do with her?" Isabelle demanded.
"Let her go," Jace said quietly. Isabelle felt surprised, almost angry, and shot him a look that said as much, but she didn't argue. The whip slithered away, freeing the girl's arm. She rubbed her sore wrist.
"Maybe we should bring her back with us," Alec said. "I bet Hodge would like to talk to her."
"No way are we bringing her to the Institute," said Isabelle. "She's a mundie." And also not one of the ones she happened to like. (Or, the one single mundie she liked, more to the point.) "Or is she?" said Jace softly. He tilted his head at the girl. "Have you had dealings with demons, little girl? Walked with warlocks, talked with the Night Children? Have you --"
"My name is not 'little girl,'" the girl interrupted. "And I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't believe in -- in demons, or whatever you --"
"Clary?" asked an unfamiliar male voice that made the gir whirl around. There was a skinny, gangly boy in glasses standing by the storage room door. Next to him was a man Isabelle recognized as one of the club's burly bouncers. "Are you okay?" the boy asked as he peered through the gloom. Poor mundane didn't see too well in the dark. "Why are you in here by yourself? What happened to the guys -- you know, the ones with the knives?"
The girl - Clary, apparently - stared at the boy, then back at Isabelle, Alec, and Jace. Isabelle still had her whip in her hand, as did Jace his knife, not to mention his bloody shirt. He grinned at the girl and dropped a half-apologetic, half-mocking shrug. A smirk tugged on Isabelle's lips. Sometimes, it was fun to be unseen. Clary turned slowly back towards her companion, admitting defeat. "I thought they went in here," she said lamely. "But I guess they didn't. I'm sorry." Her friend was starting to look embarrassed. And the bouncer looked annoyed. "It was a mistake."
Behind her, Isabelle giggled.
[ooc: NFB, NFI, OOC-okay! Warning for some violence. Alec modded here and in future catch-ups with kind permission. Taken with tweakage from Cassandra Clare's City of Bones. Here we go; brace yourselves for terrible supernatural YA on your flists.]
And their prey was taking the bait. It looked like a boy with blue hair, and it -- he had just snapped to attention, spotting Isabelle across the crowd. Isabelle smirked to herself, then turned that smirk wider and flirtier as she gave it to the guy, moving through the crowd. He followed her, not seeming to notice the two dark figures at his heels, stalking behind him. Isabelle made her way to the wall, and opened a door marked no admittance. She beckoned the blue-haired boy after her. He complied, and they slipped through the door.
"What's your name?"
Isabelle turned and smiled. What faint light there was in the storage room spilled down through high barred windows smeared with dirt. Piles of electrical cables, along with broken bits of mirrored disco balls and discarded paint cans littered the floor. "Isabelle."
"That's a nice name." He walked toward her, stepping carefully among the wires in case any of them were live. He was leering at her like she was dinner. "I haven't seen you here before."
"You're asking me if I come here often?" Isabelle asked with a giggle, covering her mouth with her hand. If that exposed a Mark on her wrist, oh well.
It had. The demon froze. "You --" He didn't finish. She moved with lightning swiftness, striking out at him with her open hand, a blow to his chest that would have sent him down gasping if he'd been a human being. He staggered back, and Isabelle brought her whip down, curling around his ankles, jerking him off his feet. He hit the ground, writhing, the metal biting deep into his skin. She laughed, standing over him, and yanked hard on the whip, securing it. Her smile, she was sure, was terrifying in its glee. Couldn't help it; she hadn't felt this much like herself in a long time now. "He's all yours, boys."
A low laugh sounded behind the demon, and now there were hands on him, hauling him upright, throwing him against one of the concrete pillars. Alec and Jace pulled his hands behind his back, and bound his wrists with wire. While he was struggling, Jace walked around the pillar into his view. "So," he said. "Are there any more with you?"
"Any other what?" the demon asked, making Isabelle roll her eyes at the pointlessness of playing dumb. "Come on now," Jace said, voicing her thoughts. He held up his hands, and his dark sleeves slipped down, showing the runes all over his wrists, the backs of his hands, his palms. "You know what I am."
"Shadowhunter," he hissed.
Jace grinned. "Got you," he said. He stuck his hands in his pockets, and paced back and forth, leisurely. "So," he said. "You should tell me if there are any other of your kind with you."
"I don't know what you're talking about." The blue-haired boy's tone was pained but surly. "He means other demons," said Alec, dryly. "You do know what a demon is, don't you?"
The boy turned his face away, although his mouth was working, even if no sound came out. "Demons," drawled the Jace, tracing the word on the air with his finger. "Religiously defined as hell's denizens, the servants of Satan, but understood here, for the purposes of the Clave, to be any malevolent spirit whose origin is outside our own home dimension --"
"That's enough, Jace," Isabelle sighed.
"Isabelle's right," Alec agreed. "Nobody here needs a lesson in semantics -- or demonology." Jace raised his head and smiled at the demon. "Isabelle and Alec think I talk too much," he said, confidingly. "Do you think I talk too much?"
The blue-haired boy didn't reply. His mouth was still working. "I could give you information," he said. "I know where Valentine is." Jace glanced back at Alec, who shrugged. "Valentine's in the ground," Jace said. "The thing's just toying with us." Isabelle tossed her hair. "Kill it, Jace," she said. "It's not going to tell us anything."
Jace raised his hand, and dim light sparked off the knife he was holding. It was oddly translucent, the blade clear as crystal, sharp as a shard of glass, the hilt set with red stones. The demon boy gasped. "Valentine is back!" he protested, dragging at the bonds that held his hands behind his back. "All the Infernal Worlds know it -- I know it -- I can tell you where he is --"
Rage flared suddenly in Jace's eyes. "By the Angel, every time we capture one of you bastards, you claim you know where Valentine is. Well, we know where he is too. He's in hell. And you -- " Jace turned the knife in his grasp, the edge sparking like a line of fire. "You can join him there."
And he would've made good on his words, Isabelle knew it, except right then someone stumbled out from behind a pillar. A girl. A mundane girl with red hair, screaming, "Stop! You can't do this." Jace whirled around, so startled that the knife flew from his hand and clattered against the concrete floor. Isabelle and Alec turned along with him. Their expressions of astonishment had to be damn near identical. They were all glamoured to be invisible to mundanes, after all. It was Alec who spoke first. "What's this?" he demanded, looking from the girl to his siblings, as if they might know what she was doing there. "It's a girl," Jace said, recovering his composure. "Surely you've seen girls before, Alec. Your sister Isabelle is one." He took a step closer to the girl, squinting as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. "A mundie girl," he said, half to himself. "And she can see us."
"Of course I can see you," the girl said. "I'm not blind, you know."
"Oh, but you are," said Jace, bending to pick up his knife. "You just don't know it." He straightened up. "You'd better get out of here, if you know what's good for you."
"I'm not going anywhere," the girl said. "If I do, you'll kill him." She pointed at the boy with the blue hair. "That's true," admitted Jace, twirling the knife between his fingers. "What do you care if I kill him or not?"
"Be-- because," the girl spluttered. "You can't just go around killing people."
"You're right," said Jace. "You can't go around killing people." He pointed at the demon, whose eyes were slitted. "That's not a person, little girl. It may look like a person and talk like a person and maybe even bleed like a person. But it's a monster."
"Jace," said Isabelle warningly. "That's enough."
"You're crazy," Clary said, backing away from him. "I've called the police, you know. They'll be here any second."
"She's lying," said Alec, but there was doubt on his face. "Jace, do you --" He never got to finish his sentence. At that moment the blue-haired boy, with a high, yowling cry, tore free of the restraints binding him to the pillar, and flung himself on Jace. They fell to the ground and rolled together, the blue-haired boy tearing at Jace with hands that glittered as if tipped with metal. Isabelle yelled out his name as she and Alec ran towards them, the mundie girl all but forgotten. Sitting on Jace's chest, the demon slashed at Jace with claws extended. Jace threw an arm up to protect himself, and the claws raked it, splattering blood. The demon lunged again -- but this time Isabelle's whip came down across his back. He shrieked and fell to the side. Jace rolled over, a blade already gleaming in hand. He sank the knife into the demon's chest. It arched off the floor, gurgling and twisting as blackish liquid exploded around the hilt of the knife. With a grimace Jace stood up, then reached down, and yanked out the knife. The demon's eyes opened again, and fixed on Jace. Between his teeth, he hissed, "So be it. The Forsaken will take you all." Jace seemed to snarl. The demon's eyes rolled back. His body began to jerk and twitch as he crumpled, folding in on himself, growing smaller and smaller until he vanished entirely.
Alec was already moving in to get an iratze on Jace, while the sound of scrambling caught Isabelle's attention. The mundie girl. She was trying to back away and get out. She was tripping over wires, though, and that gave Isabelle ample time to block her route off, whip in hand. And, yeah, maybe she was a little pissed off, because she flicked the whip towards the girl, and made the end wrap itself around her wrist before she jerked it tight. The girl gasped with pain and surprise, and Isabelle felt no compassion. "Stupid little mundie," she hissed. "You could have gotten Jace killed."
"He's crazy," the girl said, trying to pull her wrist back. The whip bit deeper into her skin. "You're all crazy. What do you think you are, vigilante killers? The police --"
"The police aren't usually interested unless you can produce a body," said Jace. Cradling his arm, he picked his way across the cable-strewn floor toward the girls. Alec followed behind him, face screwed into a scowl. The girl glanced towards where the demon boy had been. There was no trace of it now. "They return to their home dimensions when they die," said Jace. "In case you were wondering."
"Jace," Alec hissed. "Be careful."
Jace drew his arm away. A freckling of blood marked his face. "She can see us, Alec," he said. "She already knows too much."
"So what do you want me to do with her?" Isabelle demanded.
"Let her go," Jace said quietly. Isabelle felt surprised, almost angry, and shot him a look that said as much, but she didn't argue. The whip slithered away, freeing the girl's arm. She rubbed her sore wrist.
"Maybe we should bring her back with us," Alec said. "I bet Hodge would like to talk to her."
"No way are we bringing her to the Institute," said Isabelle. "She's a mundie." And also not one of the ones she happened to like. (Or, the one single mundie she liked, more to the point.) "Or is she?" said Jace softly. He tilted his head at the girl. "Have you had dealings with demons, little girl? Walked with warlocks, talked with the Night Children? Have you --"
"My name is not 'little girl,'" the girl interrupted. "And I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't believe in -- in demons, or whatever you --"
"Clary?" asked an unfamiliar male voice that made the gir whirl around. There was a skinny, gangly boy in glasses standing by the storage room door. Next to him was a man Isabelle recognized as one of the club's burly bouncers. "Are you okay?" the boy asked as he peered through the gloom. Poor mundane didn't see too well in the dark. "Why are you in here by yourself? What happened to the guys -- you know, the ones with the knives?"
The girl - Clary, apparently - stared at the boy, then back at Isabelle, Alec, and Jace. Isabelle still had her whip in her hand, as did Jace his knife, not to mention his bloody shirt. He grinned at the girl and dropped a half-apologetic, half-mocking shrug. A smirk tugged on Isabelle's lips. Sometimes, it was fun to be unseen. Clary turned slowly back towards her companion, admitting defeat. "I thought they went in here," she said lamely. "But I guess they didn't. I'm sorry." Her friend was starting to look embarrassed. And the bouncer looked annoyed. "It was a mistake."
Behind her, Isabelle giggled.
[ooc: NFB, NFI, OOC-okay! Warning for some violence. Alec modded here and in future catch-ups with kind permission. Taken with tweakage from Cassandra Clare's City of Bones. Here we go; brace yourselves for terrible supernatural YA on your flists.]